Offspring Selection: A New Self-Adaptive Selection Scheme for Genetic Algorithms

In terms of goal orientedness, selection is the driving force of Genetic Algorithms (GAs). In contrast to crossover and mutation, selection is completely generic, i.e. independent of the actually employed problem and its representation. GA-selection is usually implemented as selection for reproduction (parent selection). In this paper we propose a second selection step after reproduction which is also absolutely problem independent. This self-adaptive selection mechanism, which will be referred to as offspring selection, is closely related to the general selection model of population genetics. As the problemand representation-specific implementation of reproduction in GAs (crossover) is often critical in terms of preservation of essential genetic information, offspring selection has proven to be very suited for improving the global solution quality and robustness concerning parameter settings and operators of GAs in various fields of applications. The experimental part of the paper discusses the potential of the new selection model exemplarily on the basis of standardized real-valued test functions in high dimensions.